Pages

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Chicken Legs, Fruit Salad, and the Weekly Specials with Mary Anne

IGA has peaches for 99 cents a pound. Corn on the cob is six
ears for $2.00, or 33 cents an ear. Vidalia onions are 79 cents a pound, or a
three pound bag for $2.29, which is 76 cents a pound. Prices are good through
Sunday, June 22.

Aldi has lots of fruit on sale. Mangos are 39 cents each
again. Peaches, plums, nectarines and grapes are all $1.98 for a two pound
package, or 99 cents a pound. Honeydew melons are 99 cents each. Pineapples are
$1.49 each and cantaloupes are $1.89 each. Prices are good through next Tuesday,
June 24.

Kroger has boneless, skinless chicken breasts and thighs for
$1.99 a pound. Four half gallons of milk are $5.00, or $1.25 each, or $2.50 per
gallon. Cream cheese is $1.00 for 8 ounces. Eggs are two dozen for $3.00, or
$1.50 per dozen. Prices are good through next Wednesday, June 25.

It’s back to chicken again. I hope you’re stocking up as
much as you can on other meats when they’re on sale! It’s hard to do on a tight
budget, but it can make a big difference and provide variety in the future.

CHICKEN IN LIME
calls for two limes, but they can run anywhere from 50 cents to a dollar each! (They’re
79 cents each this week at Kroger.) Nice if you can afford them, but bottled
lime juice will do instead. Figure on about 2 tablespoons of juice per lime. To
get the most juice out of your lime, you can nuke it for about 25 seconds (let
it cool before juicing it), roll it hard under your palm on the counter, and/or
use a juicer or a reamer. Or, if you don’t have a juicer or reamer, nuke it
and/or roll it and then cut it and squeeze it to get out as much juice as
possible, then scrape it with a spoon to get out every last drop. And don’t
forget to grate off the zest before you juice it. The grated zest freezes
beautifully. A batch of CHICKEN IN LIME
costs about $3.50. Serve it with ZUCCHINI AND CARROTS and give everyone a couple of fresh plums for dessert for a $6.00 meal.

GALLETTO MARINARA
is basically just chicken in spaghetti sauce. You can use canned or jarred
sauce. Just pick a basic tomato sauce, not a meat sauce or a cheese sauce. You
can often find a 24 ounce can of Hunt’s for $1.00, and that’s what I’m assuming
you’re using. You could fancy it up a bit if you wanted to by sautéing some
onions and garlic in a bit of oil, then adding the can of sauce and some extra
basil and oregano and cooking it for five minutes or so, but you don’t need to.
Using Hunt’s sauce, this will cost about $4.25. Serve with a simple salad of
half a head of lettuce and an oil and vinegar dressing for another dollar and
finish it off with half a cantaloupe for a total of just about exactly $6.00.

And finally, a fusion of cultures – chicken marinated in a
mixture of Italian dressing and teriyaki sauce, then grilled. FUSED GRILLED CHICKEN will cost about
$3.40, or less if you make your own Italian dressing and/or teriyaki sauce.
Slice a big zucchini (a pound or more) and throw it on the grill, too, and for
dessert serve each person a cup of HOMEMADE YOGURT topped with about half a cup of chopped peaches. Total cost – almost
exactly $6.00.

Of course, the best thing to do with this week’s sales is to
make a huge fruit salad. Three-fourths of a pound of peaches,
three-fourths of a pound of plums, and half a honeydew melon, all cut into
bite-size pieces and mixed together, makes over six cups of salad, or over a
cup and a half per person. Put a cup of cottage cheese in each of six big
bowls, divide the fruit salad evenly among the bowls and sprinkle each bowl
with a fourth of a cup of sliced almonds, and you’ve got a light, delicious
supper that’s perfect for a hot summer evening. It comes to just over $6.00,
but if you short each serving by a tablespoon of cottage cheese you’ll get the
cost down below $6.00. HOMEMADE YOGURT instead of cottage cheese will bring the cost down by about $2.50, to just $3.50 or about 90 cents per person.

50 Cent Breakfasts

A honeydew melon for 99 cents is a bargain, assuming it’s of
reasonable size. A large honeydew contains about eight cups of melon balls; a
small one about 6 cups. That’s about 12.5 cents a cup from a large melon or
about 17 cents a cup from a small one. At either price, it fits right into a
budget breakfast. A HONEYDEW SMOOTHIE,
for example, only costs about 45 cents for two servings of not quite two cups
each, or about 22-1/2 cents per serving. Using HOMEMADE YOGURT is key to keeping the price down. Commercial yogurt
will add another 35 cents or more, or about 20 cents per serving.

If you’ve planned far enough in advance, you can make a FROZEN HONEYDEW SMOOTHIE. Prepare the
melon chunks and put them in a single layer, not touching, on a cookie sheet.
Freeze, then transfer the frozen chunks to a plastic bag and keep in freezer
until you want to make the smoothies. If you’ve got room in the freezer,
prepare and freeze a bunch of cantaloupe and honeydew chunks to use in
smoothies later, when they’re not on sale. Two servings of between a cup and
half and two cups will cost about 70 cents, or about 35 cents each.